“You go,” Janey says. “If anyone asks, say that I am ill and Katherine has taken me to my room.”
Mary rolls her eyes impertinently and follows the ladies. Janey and I step out of the garden door and into the cold deserted courtyard. I open the letter.
“What does he say?” Janey asks, her voice muffled through her sleeve that she holds to her mouth, trying not to cough in the damp air from the river.
I raise my blurred gaze from the letter, but I can’t see her, my eyes are so filled with tears. “He says he will marry me out of hand,” I whisper. “As soon as the court returns to London. He says we are to wait no longer, that he will not listen to William Cecil’s warnings nor to anyone else. He says Robert Dudley advised him to trust to time, but Robert Dudley did not trust to time and is ruined. Ned says that he will no longer trust and wait.” I burst into tears and grip her hands. “Janey! He is going to marry me!”
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,
AUTUMN 1560
The Privy Council is meeting and the queen is attending with two of her ladies to stand behind her chair, but I am not required. Quietly, I drift from the presence chamber, up the stairs to the room for the maids of honor. Janey is waiting for me, and we go to her private room off the main chamber.
She fusses over me, taking off my hood, combing my hair, and pinning the hood on again. “This was a lovers’ quarrel,” she says. “Nothing more. Thank God that it is over and done with.”
I find I am smiling as if, suddenly, nothing mattered after all. “He wrote such a wonderful letter.”
“He’s a poet,” she replies. “His heart is in his words. And Frances Mewtas is nothing to him.”
“He should never have taken her hand after they had finished dancing,” I say.
“He knows that,” Janey agrees.
“And the next evening, was he with her?”
“He did not even see her. He was playing cards with the squires. He promised me it was so, and I saw him myself. That was your jealousy.”
“I am not jealous!”
Janey regards me with her head on one side. “You are not?”
I laugh but there is a catch in my throat. “Janey, it is this place, full of lies. And being so uncertain, and having no permission to marry and never a good time to ask! And now with Elizabeth and Robert Dudley parted forever, and him back at court but not able to be with her, everyone despising him for being a wife murderer and Elizabeth too afraid to even speak to him . . . how will she ever be happy again? We can never ask permission for our wedding! Elizabeth will never allow anyone happiness. Not when she has lost her own lover forever.”
In answer, Janey goes to the door and makes a beckoning gesture. Ned slips in. I get to my feet. “Ned,” I say uncertainly.
He does not scoop me into his arms this time, he does not sweep me off my feet. He bows very formally, then says, as if he has a prepared speech in his pocket, “I have borne you goodwill of a long time, and because you should not think I intend to mock you, I am content, if you will, to marry you.”
He takes my hand. I can feel that I am trembling. From his pocket he takes a ring and he slides it on the third finger of my left hand, it is a betrothal ring. It is a diamond, cut to glitter, elegantly pointed along the length of my finger, as if it would join our two hearts with its bright fire.
“What d’you say?” he whispers. “How d’you like me? How d’you like my offer?”
“I like both you and your offer, am content to marry with you,” I say solemnly.
“Will you witness our betrothal?” he asks Janey shortly.
“Oh, yes!” she gasps. She stands before us, looking from one to another.
“I, Edward Seymour, take thee, Katherine Grey, to be my wife in futuro,” he pledges. “And in proof of this I give you this ring, and this purse of gold, and my sacred word.”
I have never attended a betrothal. I don’t know what I am to do. I look up at the handsome face of my husband-to-be.
“You say the same,” he says.
“I, Katherine Grey, take thee, Edward Seymour, to be my husband in futuro,” I repeat his vow. “And in proof of this, I accept this ring and this purse of gold, and your sacred word.”
“And so I witness,” Janey volunteers.
Edward drops a little purse of coins into my hand, which symbolizes that he is giving his fortune into my keeping, and then puts his hand under my chin, turns up my face, and kisses me on the lips. I think: I will never be alone or unhappy again.
“When shall we marry before a priest?” I whisper.
Again, it is Janey who has the plan. “When the queen next goes hunting, we could come to your house,” she suggests to Ned. “I’ll find a priest.”
“A preacher,” Ned specifies.
I think of how my sister Jane would never have let me be married by a priest of the old faith and I smile at him. “Of course,” I say. “But no one who knows us.”
“A stranger,” Janey agrees, “so that he tells no one and does not know who you are. I will be one witness. Who shall be the other? Your sister?”
I shake my head. “No, for when we tell the queen, she will be furious, and I don’t want Mary to take the blame for me. I’ll bring my maid.”
“Soon, then,” Ned says. “As soon as the queen goes hunting. But we are as married now as we will be later. We are husband and wife. This betrothal is as binding as wedlock.”
Janey smiles. “I’ll sit in the maids’ chamber,” she offers. “No one will come in.”
She goes out and the door closes behind her. Ned locks it and puts the key into my hand. “I am your prisoner,” he says. “You can do what you want with me.”
I hesitate. I can feel my own desire, I can hear it in the thudding in my ears.
“I am your promised husband,” he says with a smile. “You really can do what you want with me.”
I take the ties of his linen shirt that fasten it at his throat and I tug at them. “I want you to take this off,” I whisper.
“You want me naked?”
I am as hot as if I had a fever. I have to see his bare shoulders, his chest, the laces at his breeches. I long to see his thighs, his lean buttocks. I feel the heat in my face as he cups my cheeks in his hand, and he says: “Thank God that you want me as I do you.” He shucks off his shirt and I take a little breath at the sight of his lean torso, then I step forward and lean my flushed face against his warm bare chest.
He slides down his breeches, he is naked underneath. “Command me,” he whispers.
“Lie down,” I say, and he stretches out, naked and shameless on his back, and I let myself creep up the length of his body and lie on him.
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,
NOVEMBER 1560
And then we have to wait, and it is delicious timeless pleasure and pain together. Every morning I hope that perhaps today Elizabeth will say that she is going to Hampton Court, or to Windsor for the hunting, or to New Hall or to Beaulieu or anywhere—I don’t care where her ridiculous fancy takes her if she would just go! But day after day Ned is on one side of the presence chamber and I am the other, and we have to nod politely as if we were friends, and we dare not speak to each other until the evening dancing throws us together, and now, though we have so much more desire, we have more fear, and we dare not go to the corners of the room and whisper.
It is an exquisite joy to see him, to snatch a moment with him. It is agonizingly wonderful to wake in the morning and see that it is a good day for hunting: sharp and bright and cold, and surely Elizabeth will go today? And then, when she says nothing, it is a delightful torment to dance with Ned, and steal away with him for a kiss and dare to do no more. It is a passionate courtship and now I know the joy that his touch brings to me. It is lust deferred, it is love delayed, there is nothing in the world more delightful than being in his arms, unless it is knowing that I will be in his arms later . . . but not now.
William Cecil, the queen’s advisor, comes over to sit besi
de me before dinner one evening, as we are waiting in the presence chamber for the queen to finish the lengthy process of dressing in her inner rooms.
“You are in your finest beauty,” he tells me. “We shall have the Spanish proposing marriage to you again. I have never seen you look so well.”
I look down. I am no fool. I know that he is my friend, but I also know that he is first for his faith and then for England, and then for the queen, and everyone else comes after that. I have seen him triumph over the French in Edinburgh, and I have seen him triumph over Robert Dudley at court, and I swear I shall never make the mistake of underrating William Cecil. Only God and William Cecil know what he will do to keep a Protestant queen on the throne of England.
“Ah, my lord, you know I have no wish to go to Spain or anywhere,” I say. “My heart is in England.”
“Is it safe in your keeping, though?” he teases me gently, as a favored uncle will joke with a pretty niece.
“Certainly I would never throw it away,” I reply.
“Well, he’s a handsome young man and you’re very well suited,” he says with a knowing smile.
I stifle a gasp. The quiet advisor, who apparently goes around the court ignoring the foolish young people, thinking of nothing but statecraft, has spotted what no one else but Janey and Mary know.
“I may be old but I’m not quite blind,” he says gently. “But as her heir, you must have the queen’s permission to marry, remember.”
Too late for that! I think gleefully. “I know,” I say obediently. “Will you speak up for me, Sir William? Should I ask her now?”
“All in good time,” he says, as if he has forgotten the urgency of young desire. “Now, at last, she understands that she has to marry for the good of the country, now at last she sees that it has to be a marriage and an alliance—not a private matter. When she is betrothed, she will be more tolerant of marriage for you, and for the other ladies of her court.”
“It is hard for us all to wait until she is ready, when she is so slow,” I remark.
He gives me a discreet smile. “It is hard for us all to serve a queen who is slow to do her duty,” he says. “But she will do her duty and marry the right man, and you will do yours.”
“She can never marry Robert Dudley now.”
I can tell nothing of what he is thinking by the gentle smile on his face. “Indeed no,” he says almost regretfully. “And now, thanks be to God, he knows it as well as all the rest of us. And so she will marry a prince of Spain or France or even Sweden or Germany, and you, and I, and all of England will sleep better at nights.”
“Is the court going hunting?” I ask, thinking of the nights.
“Oh, yes, to Eltham Palace, tomorrow.”
“I think I may ask to be excused,” I say. “I have toothache.”
He nods. For all that he sees so much, he has forgotten that a young woman does not give up a day out for a toothache. He is too old to see that I am aching not with my tooth but with lust.
“I shall tell Her Majesty,” he says kindly. “Keep out of cold drafts.”
CANNON ROW, LONDON,
DECEMBER 1560
Janey and I stumble along the riverbank, holding each other up in the slippery mud. We thought the easiest way to Ned’s house in Cannon Row from the palace would be along the foreshore, as the tide is out and we are unobserved. But the path is blocked with rubbish—broken beams and wrecks of boats and some disgusting garbage, and my shoes are muddy and Janey is holding her side and panting by the time we reach the walls of Ned’s garden and the steps to his watergate. We are alone, the two of us. We have never before walked out in London without guards and ladies-in-waiting and maids and companions. I feel thrilled by the adventure and Janey is beside herself with excitement. We did not even bring my maid as a witness. We sent my sister Mary out hunting with the court, not knowing what I am doing. We thought it safer to come quite alone.
Ned is at the watergate, peering through the portcullis, and he cranks it up himself and helps me up the steps, which are green with weed. “My love” is all he says. “My wife!”
Janey comes up after us. “Where’s the minister?” Ned says. “I thought you were bringing him with you?”
“I told him to meet us here. Is he not here?”
“No! I’ve been waiting from dawn. I would have heard if he had come early.”
“I have to be back at the palace by dinner,” I warn them. “I’ll be missed if I am not there.”
“You go in,” Janey says to the two of us. “I’ll go and find a minister.”
“But where will you find someone?” I ask her. Ned’s hand is at my back urging me into the little house.
“I’ll go to a church—or to Saint Paul’s Cross if I have to,” she says with a breathless little laugh. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Ned has prepared his room for a wedding feast. There are dishes and dishes of food on the sideboard waiting to be served, there are flagons of red wine and goblets made of Venetian glass, there is small ale and even water. The servants have all been sent out for the day. His bed is made, and I see the embroidered sheets invitingly turned back. He sees me glance and says, “I suppose we do have to wait for Janey?”
“What if they were to come in?”
He laughs. “Then will you take a glass of wine, Countess?”
I beam at my new title, remembering when I asked my sister Jane to pray for a duke for me. She must have done so, and God must have listened to her, for now I have a man who was the son of a duke and whose title might be restored by Elizabeth’s goodwill, if she ever has any. Then I will be a royal duchess. “Thank you, my lord husband.”
He pours me a glass and one for himself. We sit in the window seat and look out over the muddy riverbank and the tide coming in, the seagulls soaring and bobbing down. He settles me with my back to his chest, leaning against him, his arms around me. I am embraced and held and I have never known such safety and comfort.
“I have never been happier,” he says. “It is as if every moment I spend with you is a gift.”
“I know,” I say. “I have loved you ever since I was a little girl and I thought that Jane my sister was going to marry you.”
“God bless her! I will make it all up to you,” he promises. “You will never be alone and afraid again.”
“I will be your wife,” I say. “I cannot be alone and afraid if we are one.”
He reaches into his pocket. “I had this ring made for you. I sketched it out for the goldsmith as soon as we were betrothed.”
I give a little gasp of pleasure as he shows me his clenched hand then opens his fingers to show me his gift. It is exquisitely made. A hidden spring opens the broad ring and shows five golden links that form an inner ring.
“And I wrote you a poem,” he tells me.
I am entranced. I turn the ring over and over in my hand, admiring the little catch and how the entwined rings spring out and then hide again.
“As circles five, by art compact, show but one ring in sight,
So trust unites faithful minds, with knot of secret might,
Whose force to break (but greedy death) no wight possesseth power,
As time and sequels well shall prove; my ring can say no more.”
“A knot of secret might,” I repeat.
“I promise you,” he says. “No wight possesseth the power to break us.”
“No one,” I say, putting my hand in his.
The door bursts open without announcement and Janey comes in, feverish and flushed, with a rosy-faced redheaded man with a beard, dressed like one of the Swiss reformers in a black furred gown.
“Here,” says Janey, gesturing to both of us with a flourish.
He gives a short laugh at our clasped hands and the prepared bed, and bows to us both. Ned has the prayer book at the ready and he puts my wedding ring—my beautiful wedding ring with its secret might—onto the open page. The preacher recites the order of service and we repeat it after h
im. I am dazed: this is nothing like my first wedding at Durham House to a stranger, with my sister Jane going before me, marrying Guildford Dudley under protest, and two days of opulent feasting. I hardly hear the gabbled words in the strange accent; I hardly hear my own assent. It is over in moments and Janey sweeps the minister from the room and I hear the clink of a coin as money changes hands.
She is back in a moment. “I’ll drink to your health,” she says. “My brother and his wife. God bless you!”
“God bless us all,” Ned says. He looks down at me, his eyes warm, watching me turn his ring round and round on my finger. “Is it a good fit?” he asks.
“It’s a perfect fit,” I say.
“And what children you will have!” Janey predicts. “And so close to the throne! Tudor on one side, Seymour on the other. Say that you have a boy, and he is King of England?”
“Say we do?” Ned says meaningfully. “How shall we do that?”
“Oh! No need to hint me out of the door, I’m away!” Janey says, laughing. “I’ll read a book or play the virginals or write a poem or something, don’t worry about me. But we have to leave before dinner, remember. They will notice if Katherine is not in her place this evening.”
She flicks from the room, closing the door behind her. We are alone, my new husband and I. Gently, he takes the glass of wine from my hand. “Shall we?” he asks courteously.
As if we are engaged in some strange and beautiful dance, I turn away from him and gently he unties the laces down the back on my stomacher, so I can slip the bodice off, and stand before him in my smock. He unties the laces on his jacket and we are matching in our white embroidered linen. I turn my back to him again and he unties the ribbons at the waist of my skirt and drops it to the floor. I step out of it, and the undergown, and leave them there.
With a little smile at me, he unties the laces on his breeches and strips so that he is naked but for his shirt; he takes the hem and draws it over his head so that I can see all of him, the whole lean length of him. He hears my little sigh of desire and he laughs, and takes the hem of my smock and draws it over my head, and though I turn away and put my arms across my breasts, suddenly shy, he takes my hand and draws me to the bed. He gets in first, pulling me in beside him, and I slip between the cool sheets and shiver, and then he is on top of me and kissing me and I forget embarrassment and cold sheets and even the wedding and the minister. All I can think is “Ned” and all I can feel is my joy at the sensation, for the first time in my life, of his naked warm body against mine, from his whispering mouth in my hair to our entwined feet.
The Last Tudor Page 21